What Trump Wants from Bill Pulte

President Trump’s critics would have you believe that William John Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, is not qualified to serve as the director of national intelligence, the job that Trump gave him on an acting basis this morning. They correctly note that Pulte, the heir to a home-construction company, has no background in national security, and that this would seem to disqualify him from serving as the nation’s most senior intelligence official, on the grounds of not only common sense but also the law, which requires that the DNI have “extensive national security experience.”But what if the naysayers are looking at things all wrong? The president has shown no sign that he wants a DNI who can coordinate the work of 18 intelligence agencies and harness the power of a multibillion-dollar global-espionage network to provide senior government leaders the best up-to-the-minute information about threats to U.S. national security. No, what Trump has made very clear is that he wants a DNI who will selectively declassify government documents that help fuel conspiracy theories, use the authorities of the state to enact political retribution against his enemies, and try to persuade Americans that Venezuela and maybe the Democratic Party are rigging elections by fiddling with voting machines.From that perspective, Bill Pulte is even better suited for the job than the woman he’s replacing. In her 15-month tenure as the DNI, the former Democratic Representative Tulsi Gabard merely accused “deep-state” actors of launching a “yearslong coup” against Trump, which apparently continued while he was out of office and may still be happening. Pulte, meanwhile, made criminal referrals to the Justice Department, alleging mortgage fraud by some of Trump's most reviled political adversaries, including former New York Attorney General Letitia James, Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, Senator Adam Schiff, and former Representative Eric Swalwell.Never mind that none of